“Give him another dose!” one of the yearlings calls out. “Come on, Harriet: charge him!”
Holding the control panel, Harriet looks around the room with a puzzled expression. Unaccustomed to attention she may be, but she is realising that with it comes influence and power. As Arthur slumps in his chair, she straightens.
“Charge him! Charge him!” the refrain continues.
Harriet’s eyes narrow and she turns up the dial to five.
Another cry escapes Arthur’s lips as the knob returns to zero. “OK fine.” Now he sounds angry. “So I took the blessed Coco Pops. Can you take these off me now?”
“So at last he confesses in full!” cries Sebastian, triumphant. “Now what punishment do you think we should impose?”
Even before he finishes the sentence, the chant has resumed: “Charge him! Charge him!”
“You heard the people, Harriet,” he says.
The American girl’s mouth is now set. Without being prompted, she turns the dial—to six.
“Stop it, stop it!” shrieks Arthur as pain courses through his body.
Beside her, Henry is beginning to stand.
But Sebastian is not about to be interrupted. “I don’t hear him apologising.” His brow creases into a frown. “I wonder if he’s even sorry. How might we make him sorry?”
“Charge him! Charge him!”
Harriet’s eyes are glazed, and she turns the dial yet again—past the safety point—to seven.
In the chair, Arthur’s body begins to shake uncontrollably. Hall fills with jubilant cheers as the students look on.
Henry has left his seat. “We’ve got to do something,” he says.
“Very well.” She stands also. “You take care of Harriet, I’ll get Arthur.”
They move to the front of Hall where Sebastian is smirking. But Harriet’s face has lost its grim determination. She is trying to turn the dial back to zero. Is it jammed? Panic appears in her eyes and soon her own body is shaking also, but with fear.
“I can’t—” Harriet begins. “I can’t switch it off.”
Henry is beside her and grabs the control box, even as Arcadia reaches Arthur. The boy’s muscles are tensing uncontrollably, a froth of saliva forming on his lips as his eyes are clenched shut. She reaches for the clips attached to his fingers.
“Wait, Arcadia,” Henry cries. “If you touch him you’ll get electrocuted also.”
“I very much doubt that,” she says, putting a hand on Arthur’s wrist to hold him while she removes the cords from one finger at a time.
Arthur stops shaking and slumps forward in the chair. Sweat has discoloured his shirt and gradually his breathing returns to normal. Henry moves beside her; in a burst of heroism he rips the cords out from the control box, which he still holds. Behind him, Harriet is in tears while Sebastian looks on, untroubled.
From the back of Hall a loud voice calls out. “Very well, ladies and gentlemen, I think I’ll take it from here.”
Still in the chair, Arthur raises his head to look at Mr. Ormiston. “Is the game over, then?” he asks weakly.
“Yes it is, Arthur,” Mr. Ormiston replies, walking towards the front of Hall, a mix of emotions on his face. Disappointment, mostly. He reaches the chair and bends down to help her unstrap the boy. Turning to Arcadia, Headmaster opens his mouth, pauses, and then closes it again.
Between them, Arthur looks up. “So how did I do?” he asks. “Was the saliva a bit much? I read that sometimes people wet their pants. I’m all for method acting—but I wasn’t prepared to go that far.”
“You did fine, Arthur,” she replies. “You did fine.”
7
PUNISHMENT
“I’m guessing you thought it would take longer than twenty-four hours for the beast to take over?” The other students have shuffled off to classes, but she stays behind to help Mr. Ormiston sweep the floor. The cleaning staff will be returning soon, but she is curious about what led him to support this odd enterprise.
Headmaster pauses for a moment, then nods. “Ah yes, Lord of the Flies. It took weeks before those boys killed anyone. I did think the Priory School might last more than a day.”
She uses a pan to gather up a pile of cornflakes. “And was there some educational purpose? Or did Sebastian just talk you into it?”
He sighs. “A bit of both. Master Harker was doing an assignment on a prison experiment done back in the 1970s at Stanford University. A professor got some students to pretend to be guards, while others were prisoners.”
“I’ve heard of it,” she says. “The guards became sadistic and the experiment was abandoned in less than a week. It was controversial, but supported the theory that people’s behaviour depends less on their inherent virtue than on the situation in which they find themselves.”
“Yes.” Mr. Ormiston crouches to pick up a slice of bread that has landed butter-down on the floor. “Sebastian seemed genuinely interested in the psychology behind it and, for the first time, had done some original thinking about a piece of schoolwork. I told him that I was willing to relax school rules to see how the students behaved in a rule-free environment, but he seems to have taken the Stanford prison experiment as a model instead of a warning.”
An interesting explanation, but surely not a sufficient one to divert the entire school. “Of course you weren’t just helping him with his assignment,” she says. “You were also conducting your own experiment.”
He drops the bread in a garbage bag and straightens. “When Sebastian came to me, with Arthur proposing to play the role of victim, I thought it might provide a teachable moment. That our students might see that they have the resilience necessary to remain moral in the face of evil—or that they need it. But what about you? Why didn’t you act to stop things earlier?”
“It was evident that we were being tested,” she says, “and I presumed that you wanted the experiment to play out rather than be stopped simply because it was artificial. Sebastian isn’t that good an actor. And though Arthur pulled off a very good Hamlet last year, being electrocuted requires perfect timing and his was a little off.”
Mr. Ormiston laughs wryly. “I should have known that you would see through it. At some point we are all tested, Arcadia. Even you will be, one day. And when that happens, I hope you’re strong enough to realise that doing the right thing doesn’t just mean following your brain, but also following your heart.”
Most of the floor is now clear of debris. “You had best get on to class,” Mr. Ormiston says. “And I’d better go and check on Miss Doran.”
From its perch on a windowsill, the sparrow swoops down to pick up a last crust of bread, flying out the open door and into the chill morning air.
“You, the students of the Priory School, come from some of the best families in our land. You want for nothing.”
It is evening and Mr. Ormiston now stands in the pulpit at Chapel. Friday evensong is normally optional, but an announcement about the reinstatement of school rules came with a polite encouragement to attend. The chaplain, Mr. Roundhay, beamed as he commenced the service, thinking that additional such debacles might bring more of the students closer to God. After the Bible readings—Proverbs 25: “He that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city that is broken down, and without walls”—Mr. Ormiston rose to deliver a homily that is less meditation on the scripture than on the weakness of the human heart.
“The school provides a safe environment within which to develop your boundless potential,” he continues. “And yet,” now his voice deepens, “and yet you so quickly descend into the very worst of what humanity has to offer. Instead of loving your neighbour, you turn on him; instead of protecting the weak, you bay for his pain.” He shakes his head. “I blame myself. This was a test for which many of you were not ready. I overestimated the extent to which we have prepared you for the trials of the world.”
Mr. Ormiston is being hard on himself. Perhaps he should be. Surveying the young men and women seated before him, he
runs a hand through hair that has started to grey. “But there will come a time when you can no longer blame your actions on your genes or on your circumstances. There comes a time at which you must take responsibility. That’s what defines the transition to adulthood.
“Immanuel Kant once wrote that you should never treat the humanity in someone—even in yourself—merely as a means to an end. That humanity is an end in itself; it’s what makes us human. If that message resonates with even some of you, then this whole sorry episode may yet have been worthwhile.”
He returns to his seat and Mr. Roundhay leads the final prayer, asking them to open their hymnals to the Old Hundredth as the recessional. The words were memorised long ago, but she opens the book in solidarity with her peers:
All people that on earth do dwell,
Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice.
Her mouth sings and her eyes are on the page, but the focus of her attention is neither lyrics nor music. It is on the precise handwriting that runs down the side of the hymnal.
Frph dw plgqljkw. Frph dorqh.
She looks around Chapel but all she sees are students and staff. Beside her, Henry’s blond hair bobs in time with the music. From the altar, Mr. Roundhay catches her eye and smiles, but it is the genial pastor’s smile he gives everyone.
She returns her gaze to the text. A simple Caesar’s code, it substitutes each letter with one further down the alphabet. A basic cipher, but sufficient to make a string of letters look superficially random. Take the third letter before each, however, and the text reads:
Come at midnight. Come alone.
After the service, she walks across the quadrangle with Henry. A few stars are visible in the moonless sky, though clouds are beginning to obscure them.
“So,” Henry muses, “do you think Harriet really would have electrocuted Arthur?”
“I think the answer to that question is why Harriet is still with the nurse. Peer pressure can bring out the worst in people.”
“Not you, eh? You don’t do things just because other people want you to.”
She shrugs. “It depends who is asking. But peer pressure means doing things just because other people expect you to do so. That’s rarely a good reason.”
They keep walking, their footsteps naturally falling into a single rhythm. She lengthens and slows her gait, Henry unconsciously following her until at last he almost trips.
“What was that all about?” he asks, laughing.
“Trying to find your own rhythm in the world can be tricky. It’s often easier to give in to peer pressure.”
They approach the dormitory building, though she has no intention of sleeping. Given what she plans to do, an insurance policy is in order.
“Henry,” she begins. “You know how you can use your computer to find your phone when you lose it?”
“You never lose your phone, Arcadia.”
“OK, but for people who do, you know the feature.”
“Yes, I’ve used it myself,” he says. “Once. Maybe three times. I might even use it again when I buy a new phone to replace the one that Moira fried.”
“And you know you can also use it to track someone else’s phone also?”
“You mean stalk them?”
“I suppose it could look a bit like that,” she replies. “But if, say, someone was going to do something in which there was a moderate amount of risk, it might be nice to know that someone else could find you.”
He stops walking. “What exactly are you involved in now, Arcadia?”
“I don’t know. Yet. But there’s something connecting Moira, Lysander Starr, Miss Alderman—and Dr. Bell.”
“The guy from Magdalen?”
“Yes.”
“Arcadia, when you start using phrases like ‘moderate amount of risk’ it means you’re going to do something most people would regard as foolhardy. Whatever you’re doing, don’t try to do it alone?”
“I’m not, Henry. Knowing that you have my back means a lot to me. In any case, I don’t think it rises to the level of ‘foolhardy’. But if it makes you feel better, here are my login details so that you can find my phone—and me.” She passes him a slip of paper, their fingers brushing as he takes it.
“With these I could also buy some movies and see all your photos, right?”
“I wouldn’t get your hopes up, Henry.”
He folds the paper and puts it into his wallet. “Is this like people swapping apartment keys? Do I need to give you my login details now also when I get a new phone?”
“Don’t be silly, Henry,” she says. “That’s hardly necessary—I know them already.”
She retires to her room but does not change. It is almost midnight when she receives a text message. The number is blocked, but the message itself clear enough:
Chapel. Come at once if convenient. If inconvenient, come all the same.
Wrapping a coat around herself, she separates her phone from its charger and puts it into her bag. From the darkened dormitory she slips onto the quadrangle. The night air is crisper than usual, possibly heralding snow. Her footsteps on the grass are the only sound as she crosses the lawn and approaches the darkened Chapel.
Though Mr. Roundhay retires to his own quarters in the evening, the doors to Chapel are never locked. Inside, a dim glow comes from the chancel lamp above the altar. The air is slightly warmer than outside, but she keeps her coat wrapped around her as she moves down the aisle. Nothing stirs.
The altar was stripped of its linen after the service, but something now stands upon it. Chess pieces? She approaches the sanctuary. A board rests on the altar, complete with wooden chessmen arranged in a late stage endgame. Curious. Up to that point it seemed most likely that the midnight assignation was with Miss Alderman.
“You can come out now, Moira,” she says.
There is a chuckle from the vestry and the other her emerges, clad in black once more but with her hair pulled back in a ponytail. In the darkness it is hard to tell, but her hair looks paler. Turning grey? “Shh,” Moira raises a finger to her lips. “I’m supposed to be dead.” The movements are still erratic, but the other her seems none the worse for wear after faking her own demise. “I can’t believe you didn’t come to my funeral.”
“Was there a funeral?” she, Arcadia, asks.
“You didn’t even bury my ashes? What kind of a sister are you?” The outrage appears genuine for a moment, then Moira breaks character and laughs. She takes a swig from a bottle.
“Back on the wagon, I see?”
“I’m refining the patches.” The other her gestures at the board. “So, how about a nice game of chess?”
“It looks like you’re already in the middle of a game.”
“My opponent couldn’t stay. Why not see if you can finish it? You play white. Your challenge is to try to checkmate me in six moves.”
“Fine,” she says, studying the board. Moira’s games usually have a point; getting to it sooner might enable her to ask some questions of her own for a change. Then she sees that there is only one legal move for white anyway.
Chess grandmasters plan several moves ahead, though how many depends on the state of the game. As the number of pieces shrink, so do the options. “My king is pinned and all my pawns but one are blocked. All I can do is move the centre pawn.”
Moira giggles. “You know the old Stoic saying: ‘The Fates lead the willing; the unwilling, they drag.’”
Arcadia moves her pawn to d4 and Moira responds by advancing a piece down the king’s knight file to b5. The same constraints mean that for her next move she can still only move the same pawn, now coming to rest at d5 behind another white pawn, blocking it and also threatening stalemate.
Yet Moira also has only one legal move, which is to advance her own pawn down to b4 where it is threatened by Arcadia’s.
Again there is a single legal move: to take Moira’s pawn at b4. And then she sees the inevitability of it—each of them has a passed pawn, each heading down an open fil
e. Moira’s will reach the end first, but the following move will see her own pawn queened at b8 even as it checkmates black’s king.
The Fates lead the willing; the unwilling, they drag.
Moira sees that she understands and begins packing up the pieces. “Well, wasn’t that fun,” the other her says briskly, taking another drink from the bottle.
“So you invited me here to play a pointless game of chess in which neither of us had any decisions to make?”
“Hey, before you criticise someone, walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you do criticise them, you’re a mile away—and you have a new pair of shoes.” Moira gives an exasperated sigh. “No, I invited you here to have a girl-to-girl chat, maybe do each other’s hair and talk about boys.”
“For someone who’s only two or three years old, you do a pretty good impression of a teenager.”
The other her folds up the chessboard. “At last the scales fall from her eyes and she begins to understand the world around her! Yes, big sister, I may have been given the souped up genes, but you’ll always have time on me. That second law of thermodynamics is a bitch.”
“I’m afraid there’s daylight between you and a point, Moira. Are you here tonight to lecture me on the illusion of free will?”
“Hah,” the other her laughs. “Quite the opposite. You see I’m normally something of a loner—trouble trusting people due to my atypical upbringing, you know. And right now I’m trying to decide whether to cross this bridge between us—or burn it down. But, as I always tell myself, a mind is like a parachute: it only works when it’s open. Though, for what it’s worth, you don’t actually need a parachute to skydive. You only need one if you want to skydive twice.
“I do confess that I’ve enjoyed getting to know you—it’s sort of like watching myself in slow motion. A flashlight can’t shine on itself, you know. The diaries were illuminating, also. I hope you don’t mind me reading them. I figured that since we’re family and all it would be OK.” Another swig from the bottle. “I did like your response to that marshmallow test business. Not bad for a four-year-old. Me, I would have stolen the keys to the cabinet, burned the laboratory to the ground, and toasted the marshmallows in the flames. But that’s a pyromaniac for you.”
Being Arcadia Page 10
